Summarized by Dane Carlton

Trilateralism; The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management

Holly Sklar, ed. (Boston, South End Press, 1980)

 

Overview

 In 1973 the Trilateral Commission was founded.  Two thirds of the 300 members are from international business and banking, government, media, and conservative labor.  The purpose of the commission is to engineer a long lasting partnership between the ruling classes of North America , Western Europe , and Japan .  This partnership is believed to safeguard the interests of Western capitalism while “attempting to mold public policy and construct a framework for international stability in the coming decades”.  In 1976, three years after the Trilateral Commission was founded, a foreign policy insider wrote that: “In the U.S. trilateralism has become almost the consensus position on foreign policy”.  Trilateralists don’t speak openly to the public but one can sense their goals and strategy by their actions.  Trilateralists have three main beliefs:

1.      the people, governments, and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations 

2.      control over economic resources spells power in modern politics

3.      the leaders of capitalist democracies where economic control and profit (and thus political power) rest with the few    

In short, trilateralism is “the current attempt by ruling elites to manage both dependence and democracy - at home and abroad.”

 

Trilateral Origins: Western Business on the Defensive

 Elite ideology and corporate planning is the backbone of Trilateralism.  Under the umbrella of the welfare/warfare state are the closely linked domestic and international stability.  With the support of liberals, big labor, and big business policy makers and presidents alike have stepped up efforts to fight the worldwide war on communism alongside the domestic war on poverty.  Political repression and expanding social welfare programs maintained stability at home.  The collapse of the postwar international economics system and crisis in the welfare/warfare state came with the sixties and early seventies.  This was evident in a 1979 Business Week cover story that claimed: 

 The entire U.S.-created post-World War II global economic system is in danger of destruction.

 Sustained political mobilization and militant protest shook the stability of trilateral governments.  Trilateralists saw this as a ‘crisis of democracy’ that plagued the West.

Domestic constraints were placed on U.S. military action as the U.S. public did not want massive intervention abroad.  Congress took steps to curb the imperial presidency and the CIA.  The main reason for the disintegration of the post-World War II economy though, was stagflation.  Stagflation is stagnant economic growth with associated widespread unemployment plus rampant inflation.  By the mid-sixties, the U.S. trade surplus had begun to erode and by ’71 the U.S. was importing more than it was exporting.  The U.S. dollar began to weaken against the West German mark and the Japanese yen.  Now more than ever economic reform was needed.  President Nixon and Treasury Secretary John Connally attempted to reassert U.S. supremacy with a “New Economic Policy”.  The new strongly protectionist policy attempted to reassert U.S. supremacy, but instead violated the rules of free trade.  Soon afterward, the Trilateral Commission was launched.  The Commission’s aim is to “nurture habits and practices of working together” among the trilateral regions in order to:

1.      promote a healthy level of competition between the capitalist powers

2.      forge a common front against the Third World and Soviet Union

3.      renovate the international political economy in the interest of global business and finance

4.      make trilateral democracy more governable

The Trilateral Commissioners assert that Trilateralism is the necessary response if corporate capitalism is to endure and prosper.

 

The New Corporate Empires

 Corporate allegiances are based on the dictates of worldwide economic profitability and growth.  The chief asset of the global corporation is mobility and feels most at home in a profit haven.  Trilateralists want corporations to be free to pursue “the true logic of the global economy”.  The best means by which to utilize world resources are Global corporations.  The Law of Private Profit holds that effort is motivated by greed, more effort means more output, and more output enhances the ‘common good’.   The real tradeoff, however, is between equality and inequality of resources and opportunity. 

 

Managing Third World Dependence

 The trilateral goal is to reorient efforts to redistribute global resources into promotion of a new order for mutual gain.  This is nothing more than the old order for trilateral gain thinly disguised with a few flourishes of affirmative action for the Third World elites.  And as seen in the past, the rich will get richer at the expense of the poor.   In the new trilateral scheme, the poorest countries are to be pacified with a basic human needs approach.  Trilateral Commissioners, regarding basic human needs, wrote:

 The alleviation of poverty is a demand of the basic principles of the West as well as simple self-interest.  In the long run an orderly world is unlikely if great affluence in one part coexists with abject poverty in another while ‘one world’ of communication, of mutual concern, and interdependence come into being.

 In discussing the goal of alleviating poverty, trilateralists concluded that without steps to redistribute existing wealth and to reallocate the means of producing wealth, poverty and hunger are here to stay.

 

The ‘Human Rights’ Strategy

 In regards to protecting human rights, Pres. Carter launched the Human Rights campaign.  He committed the United States to ‘shaping a new world order’ that is ‘just’, ‘peaceful’, and ‘more responsive to human aspirations’.  It should be noted that most, if not all, Trilateral states do not piously practice the human rights they preach.  For the few times substantive change does occur, it reflects a failure of the human rights policy, not a success.  Human rights trilateral style is a move played in the game of world politics and is only played by and for the oppressor. 

 

Managing Western Democracy

 Trilateralists are concerned with more than managing international events.  They also try to manage North American, West European, and Japanese democracy.  During the ‘60’s and ‘70’s ruling elites throughout the West were challenged with militant protest.  These protesters came from a diverse cross-section of the public:  Native Americans, Blacks, Chicanos, workers, women, students, poor people, etc.  The bipartisan foreign policy consensus was shaken by the domestic antiwar movement while pressure mounted for a more ‘equitable and democratic political, economic, and social system’.  The only thing that was sure to follow is the reassertion of the elite rule and decades of public apathy.